Hoddle Street, Punt Road and Hoddle Highway Hoddle Street, Punt Road and Hoddle Highway

Melbourne's busiest road shares 3 names, Hoddle Street, Punt Road and Hoddle Highway, but why?

Hoddle Highway (route 29) is a highway linking CityLink (south) and the Eastern Freeway (north). The name "Hoddle Highway" is almost unknown to most drivers in Melbourne, who know it better as Hoddle Street and Punt Road.

Hoddle St starts at the Eastern Freeway, changing to Punt Road at the Bridge Road intersection and heads south until reaching Citylink. Punt Road continues across the Yarra River to the Nepean and Princes Highways at St Kilda Junction.

Name Origins

Hoddle Street was named after Robert Hoddle, architect of Melbourne's Hoddle Grid.

Punt Road was named after the punt (boat) used to cross the Yarra River before Hoddle Bridge was built in 1894. (see picture above)

Why Hoddle and Punt

According to MELBOURNE MILES, The Story of Melbourne's Roads by Max Lay, Robert Hoddle chose the longest street in Melbourne to be named in his honour but before Punt Road 'bridge' existed.

NS1 Hoddle Street and Punt road
The subdivision of the lands immediately south of the Yarra occurred in 1840. The key north-south roads such as Punt Road were also section boundaries and thus aligned with their counterparts on the north side. Hoddle took some pleasure in the fact that - with Barkly Street (St Kilda), Punt Road, Hoddle Street and High Street (Northcote) - he had created a 25km length of straight, north-south road from Epping to the bay at Point Ormond. Indeed, Hoddle Street gained its name when La Trobe pointed out to Hoddle that no street had yet been named in his honour. He chose Hoddle Street, as it was then the longest street in the town.

Punt Road and Hoddle Street were not physically joined across the Yarra until a narrow three-span steel-truss pedestrian bridge (Hoddle Bridge) was built in 1894. Wheeled traffic was required to make a difficult u-shaped detour to cross the Yarra on Morell Bridge at the foot of Anderson Street.

The name change occurs, not at the Yarra River, but at Swan Street*. This probably reflects the minor role of the area south of Swan Street at the time of Hoddle's choice. However, a road reservation then existed as far south as Toorak Road, so the split is surprising.

Route 29 was declared a main road north of Princes Highway in 1960 and to the south in 1990. By 1982, Hoddle Street was a state highway. In 1994 and 1995, the route was proclaimed a state highway from Princes Highway East to Eastern Freeway.

* Current maps show the change at Bridge Road.

Punt Road to have permanent clearways from August 29, 2016

Punt Road will be turned into a permanent clearway, stopping single parked cars clogging up one of the city's busiest arterial roads.

The 24-hour clearways on Punt Road will operate seven days a week. Currently, clearways operate on weekdays only, along both the eastern and western sides between 6.30-9.30am and 3.30-6.30pm.

The permanent clearways will apply along both sides of Punt Road, from the Yarra River to St Kilda Junction.

❊ Address ❊

 ℅ Quo-yung
 ⊜  Hoddle Street Richmond 3121 View Map

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❊ Web Links ❊

➼ Hoddle Street, Punt Road and Hoddle Highway 

➼ wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoddle_Highway

➼ wapedia.mobi/en/Hoddle_Highway

❊ Also See... ❊

➼ Robert Hoddle

➼ The Punt Road Project






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